With students sometimes only receiving 2.5 hrs contact tuition a week and only having to attend the equivalent of two days per week, it is not a full-time study mode. Yet students can pay £9000 per annum fees, so the first thing they do is look for part-time jobs for the other three days per week to help pay their fees. I would suggest that the universities are mis-selling their 'Full-time' courses and should therefore only charge 2/5ths of the fees. What is your experience?

(Original post by sultony)
With students sometimes only receiving 2.5 hrs contact tuition a week and only having to attend the equivalent of two days per week, it is not a full-time study mode. Yet students can pay £9000 per annum fees, so the first thing they do is look for part-time jobs for the other three days per week to help pay their fees. I would suggest that the universities are mis-selling their 'Full-time' courses and should therefore only charge 2/5ths of the fees. What is your experience?

Yes, of course contact time is the only study that students are (or should) be doing, so of course this is a balanced and fair assessment of the situation.

For God Sake...

Generally the amount of effort you put in will correlate with the level of success in your degree. If you want to get a first on a low contact hours course, you aren't going to do it by only spending 14 hours a week in the library, that's for sure.

(Original post by Bobifier)
It is a significant leap to go from "Some courses claiming to be full time are not full time" to "No courses claiming to be full time are actually full time".

i'd agree with that , it also does not reflect the expected production of work from a significant number of low contact hours courses ...

while STEM courses often have plenty of lectures, it's small group sessions with mandated attendance, labs, and the drawing office that make these course have 30 + contact hours rather 10 -15 ... same with Health professional pre-0reg where mandated attendance at placements are requiored as well as attendance monitoring for theory sessions.

(Original post by G8D)
You support paying £9000 to sit in a library with a book you also bought?

Well that really isn't true, is it?

For most arts students (for these are the courses we are really talking about here) there are a number of things that need to be said:

1) No, most students don't buy all the books for their courses, otherwise the mad scramble for short loans in the university libraries across the country would not be a very regular occurrence. The idea that they do is just a media myth.

2) University libraries - heavily patronised by said arts students, they need to be staffed, heated, maintained and provisioned with books & journals, IT and reprographic materials. This is not cheap.

3) Contact hours - need to be conducted by specialist staff, they need to be educated, trained, paid, provided with locations to conduct such contact hours, provided with materials in order to teach and given time to prepare the materials for such courses, the courses also need to be overseen by senior academics to ensure their quality is acceptable. This all costs money too.

4) Coursework & Examinations - need to be prepared and marked, feedback needs to be provided to students, the coursework and exams need to be subject to secondary scrutiny if part of the degree assessment, the assessment needs to be passed by an exam board, the institution needs to appoint an external examiner. This all needs to be paid for.

5) Ancillary services - students take advantage of many of these at some time during their time at university such as subsidised on-campus accommodation, subsidised facilities for student unions and social groups, careers services, subsidised sports and fitness facilities, student support facilities, and so on and so forth. This all needs to be paid for too.

Now, I personally believe that the economic benefit to society of having educated graduates is such that we should pay for them from general taxation. But that doesn't mean that I think that a degree isn't value for money. It seems that most students who do think this have a very 2 dimensional world view and don't see the large amount of work and expense that lie behind the amounts of direct interaction that are made with them at a university.

I pay the £3000 fees and I was only in one day a week this year, there is absolutely no way I would pay £9000 for the course I am doing, even if they did throw in free textbooks and printer credits. Time-wise my course should be considered part-time, but it requires a lot of time sitting in the library or at home studying. If the course were part-time and advertised as such, the studying wouldn't be as intense.

I don't think people could argue that the £9k is for the facilities on the campus I study at either, it's a glorified college and the library is tiny, the only huge expense they had recently was a new sports centre which I only use their sports hall for when doing exams.

It's going to vary by subject, and also by stage of the course. Next year will be my final year, and our contact time is quite low, 2 or 3 days a week, and mostly mornings. The thing is though that the equivalent of two modules is our final year project, so whilst we won't get much group contact time for that, we'll be doing a lot of work on it throughout the year. Some, myself included, will be starting collecting data during the summer. One module also involved a 1 week field cource which is very intense (did one last year too and it was 10-7 teaching or field work, plus working in our own time).

Sometimes my course is around twenty hours a week, other times - like next week, for example - it is 40 hours, and that's not just sitting and falling asleep in a lecture theatre - it's full on, intense rehearsals. I don't think anyone can say my course isn't full time

(Original post by sultony)
With students sometimes only receiving 2.5 hrs contact tuition a week and only having to attend the equivalent of two days per week, it is not a full-time study mode. Yet students can pay £9000 per annum fees, so the first thing they do is look for part-time jobs for the other three days per week to help pay their fees. I would suggest that the universities are mis-selling their 'Full-time' courses and should therefore only charge 2/5ths of the fees. What is your experience?

You just completely invalidated your entire premise with your first line.

Some students only have 2.5 hours contact time.

Most have a lot more than this. In my first three years of uni, I had ~20 hours a week contact time, with a further 20 hours of work outside class advised.

Some courses with low contact hours aren't really full time (mostly arts courses)- I do one - International Relations and even if you including reading and essay writing it still doesn't add up to full time (and I've had firsts in some pieces of coursework).

However some courses definitley are- especially Allied Health courses like Nursing, Physio, OT and Medicine, particularly when students are on placement. Also Engineering and some Sciences.

(Original post by You Failed)
You just completely invalidated your entire premise with your first line.

Some students only have 2.5 hours contact time.

Most have a lot more than this. In my first three years of uni, I had ~20 hours a week contact time, with a further 20 hours of work outside class advised.

By Contact time I mean 'one to one' tutorial or seminar where a dialogue can take place, NOT sitting in a lecture. Could you revise your figures? Also do you not have part-time job during supposedly day studytime?

(Original post by Meat is Murder)
My course is 12 - 18 hours a week contact time (depending on the week) and thank god it is no more! I need the time to go over lecture notes, do further reading, and work on coursework.

The £9000 fees are for facilities, not just tuition. Simpletons don't get this.

As I have said elsewhere by 'Contact time' I mean one to one tutorial or seminar where a dialogue takes place, NOT sitting in a lecture. Care to revise your figures? Do you not have part-time job during the day Mon-Frid?

(Original post by sultony)
With students sometimes only receiving 2.5 hrs contact tuition a week and only having to attend the equivalent of two days per week, it is not a full-time study mode. Yet students can pay £9000 per annum fees, so the first thing they do is look for part-time jobs for the other three days per week to help pay their fees. I would suggest that the universities are mis-selling their 'Full-time' courses and should therefore only charge 2/5ths of the fees. What is your experience?

I recently worked out my hours for a student barometer survey and came out with 42 on average. The maximum contact time I've had has been 24/25 hours, but a fair bit of independent study was also necessary. With low-contact hours courses it's my understanding that a lot of wider reading is expected, substituting for contact hours.

(Original post by sultony)
By Contact time I mean 'one to one' tutorial or seminar where a dialogue can take place, NOT sitting in a lecture. Could you revise your figures? Also do you not have part-time job during supposedly day studytime?

Your definition of contact time is wrong then, lectures are important and in many courses the backbone of your course.
Last term I had 9 hours a week including lectures and only 1 and a half if you don't include lectures. However, I didn't have time for a part time job because I was writing a dissertation, several essays, had lots of reading to do etc.

(Original post by sultony)
By Contact time I mean 'one to one' tutorial or seminar where a dialogue can take place, NOT sitting in a lecture. Could you revise your figures? Also do you inot have part-time job during supposedly day studytime?

No, I don't have time for a part time job, and also, no, I won't revise the figures because you learn in lectures, which is what you're supposed to be doing. You wouldn't say you had zero hours of school just because most of those hours were sat listening to the teacher, so why would you not include those hours for lectures.

(Original post by sultony)
By Contact time I mean 'one to one' tutorial or seminar where a dialogue can take place, NOT sitting in a lecture. Could you revise your figures? Also do you not have part-time job during supposedly day studytime?

I have NO tutorials or seminars, but around 15-20hrs of lectures/week. I'm studying veterinary science (which, as a science subject, naturally has more hours in lectures) - but I think it would be wrong to say that my course is a "zero" hour course. Lectures are very important to my learning, and I am sure they are to arts students too. I am advised to spend 2 hours per lecture, so the total time I am advised to be working is 60hrs/week. I don't think you can say that there is "No such thing as a Full-time degree course".

Is any degree worth £9k? In a job market where many jobs are only to open to those with 2.1 degrees, it would seem that a degree does open doors, and this £9k may be a good investment for some students who go into graduate jobs, including those in the "arts" sector. How much you personally value a degree is worth, is up to you. As others have said, you are paying for a lot of facilities and not just paying the lecturer.

Or the students could pay more and get a better higher education, but because most students don't have the money for that they just have I make do with what they are given...it's no wonder unemployment is rising.

More and more students now are going to universities outside if the UK and the US is one of the mor popular places uk students are going to at the moment.